Friday, March 28, 2008

Delight...

In commemoration of the start of a new chapter, I'd like to revisit some things that I learned 2.5 years ago.

David says that we are to DELIGHT ourselves in the Lord, yeah? On a total side note for a moment, every translation that I have ever read has translated that word as delight, now...that strikes me as something worth looking at. Well, so...I love words, and I was really kinda wanting to understand the full definition of delight, so I went to my dictionary... now, the definition of delight is something like, find pleasure in, to please, something fluffy. So I said to myself, "hmmm...well, I feel like God wants us to find more than a happy squishy feeling when we think of HIM." Now maybe I'm wrong there, but that's my thought. So...I checked out some synonyms of delight. There were some kinda boring ones that didn't really do much for me, pleasure, joy, blegh whatever, yeah? Ok, so then I saw enthral. Now, as I said, I love words, and the more specific a word is and the more able it is to paint and sculpt and entice emotion the more I absolutely love it. Well, for me, enthral has always kinda been one of those words. I mean, for me it envokes this awesome sense of being completely consumed by something, to the point of not being able to see anything that was outside of the agent of the enthralling, the person or thing that held one enthralled. Ok, so...I already had this image in my head of a person being completely captivated beyond the point of release by anything that they were enthralled with, but I wanted to find the actual definition of enthral. Now here's where it gets really cool to me...the actual meaning of enthral is "To reduce to bondage or servitude; to make a thrall, slave, vassal, or captive of; to enslave." At first glance, I feel like this has a really negative connotation, but it really doesn't! I mean, when you think of enslavement, the first thing that comes to my mind is a sort of beating into submission, but that's not what this is saying at all! This is just saying that you are completely held captive to be made into a slave, but it doesn't say that you were forced there, you just are. You choose to be made a captive. How awesome that we are given the opportunity to be enslaved by the sheer awesomeness of God. We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord. Delight is such an amazing concept of sheer and utter giddiness. Now, imagine if you were completely captivated by that giddiness. You were so filled with joy over God that you were made into a slave by sheer adoration and excitement. Now that is awesome. I think that I would be ok with being delighted, being captivated, being enslaved by God and His awesome wonder...I would be more than ok. I would be complete.